


Discovering Emotions

by TrenchcoatRats



Series: Gift Fics [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dimension Travel, Domestic Fluff, Emotionally Constipated Tom Riddle, Kinda, Lowkey Emotional Wreck Harry Potter, M/M, Time Travel, murder as a coping mechanism, no beta reader we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 17:50:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17146289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrenchcoatRats/pseuds/TrenchcoatRats
Summary: As close as they've become, Tom still has the habit of saying or doing the worst thing in response to Harry. Missing their anniversary dinner was the worst of it, but not the least awkward of his missteps.





	Discovering Emotions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleLadySilver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLadySilver/gifts).



When Tom enters the house, he’s greeted with the sound of plates smashing and the sight of said plate’s shards falling to the ground less than a foot away from where the doorway is. The culprit is Harry in their living room, lazily flicking his wand at a stack of plates- that Tom bought for him the ungrateful brat-to levitate the plate on top before sending it flying at the wall, this time an inch closer to where Tom’s head is. Rude.

“Hello, Harry.” He puts as much ire in those two words as he is physically capable of.

Another plate is launched, followed by a quiet and cheerful, “Hi Tom, how was your day today?”

This was about to end very poorly, Tom realized. As irritated as he initially was at Harry, Harry had been allowed hours to stew in his anger. The number of ceramic shards that littered the ground also betrayed the fate of the matching sets of bowls that evidently met their end earlier. Shame, he was almost fond of that set.

“My day was perfectly fine.” Short, to the point. Better to let him blow up rather than stew and boil any longer. “And how was yours, Harry?”

Harry puts his wand down on the side table next to him calmly, the sound echoing in the room.

“My day was perfectly fine, darling. I had an absolutely amazing lunch over in Diagon Alley. There’s just something about the payoff of making a reservation for a restaurant months in advance and finally being able to sit down to enjoy the food.”

The answers are so blatantly spoonfed to him that it still takes Tom a second to realize what’s going on. But then it strikes him, he forgot to attend their anniversary lunch. That he made reservations for. That he then double booked with a meeting with his followers. Which Harry was completely in the dark about, so he was under the impression that Tom had left him to meander around London for the day for no good reason.

He keeps a blank face as he summons their set of salt and pepper shakers. It’s the least he could do and the most he was willing to do until Harry was done. Then he would waste time repairing the damage done and internally bemoaning Harry’s insistence that they would not have a house elf.

But rather than launch the plates, the shakers, or anything else at Tom, Harry merely sighs. He slouches into the armchair, reaches for his wand, and promptly banishes everything he had used as ammunition. And then he banishes the remainder of the plates and the two shakers. Tom supposes that this is appropriate behavior that Harry’s exhibiting, but he does wish that he would use his words rather than destroy their dining ware. 

Harry then gets out of the chair, turns his back to Tom, and walks right back towards their room. He knows even before it’s actually locked that he won’t be welcome in there for at least the next couple of hours. He idly contemplates Obliviating Harry when he finally comes out, but dismisses it almost instantly. If nothing else, Harry would notice their missing dishes and would have an even bigger show of temper when he found out. No, this one Tom would just have to wait out.

This wasn’t the first time Tom had been his own worst enemy with their relationship. It most likely wouldn’t be the last either. He had a certain habit of saying the worst possible things to Harry.

When he was thirteen, he met Harry for the first time. For whatever reason, the two sat next to each other at lunch in the Great Hall. He had never seen the boy before, despite them being in the same house and, presumably, the same year. Tom’s subtle side-eye was eventually noticed and met head-on.

“Hi, my name’s Harry,” he said brightly. He had the most unnerving and stunning green eyes Tom had ever seen. He didn’t even know eyes could be that color. Maybe it was the eyes, maybe it was the utter surreality of only meeting someone who had to be in his year this late into their time at school, maybe it was just because he was thirteen and confronted with the first person in Slytherin who he didn’t have to charm or threaten into making polite conversation with him. Regardless, the next words out of Tom’s mouth would haunt him for the rest of his time at Hogwarts.

“I know” was Tom’s quiet but confident response. He may have never seen or heard of Harry before in his life, but he wasn’t going to let him know that. He gave the other boy a polite nod and went back to his lunch.

It wasn’t until halfway through Professor Binns’ lecture a couple of hours later, with Harry on the opposite end of the row that Tom is sitting in, that he realizes the other boy probably wanted to know Tom’s own name as well, or at the very least have a polite, official meeting. He spends the rest of class going over their meeting in meticulous detail, wanting to know everything else he could have possibly missed in a twenty-second interaction. Unbeknownst to Tom, that was the first time he had ever truly acted his age.

When class finally ended, he briskly walked to try to catch up with Harry. If nothing else, this matter needed to be resolved before his embarrassment over his own faux pax grew even higher. He is within hearing distance in a matter of seconds and quietly calls out Harry’s name. It wouldn’t do to have anyone else aware of his mistakes, two people knowing was bad enough.

He didn’t know of any way to lead into his introduction without acknowledging his own mistake so he just stated the root of his problems for the last hour.

“I’m Tom Riddle.”

Harry stares at him as if he’s already forgotten about the whole matter, which shouldn’t infuriate Tom but it does. But then he opens his mouth and-

“I know.” It’s said with this same calm and confidence of Tom’s own statement. It catches him off guard and he flicks his eyes up to meet Harry’s own. Those eyes are no less breathtaking the second time he sees them. But even though his focus is on the eyes, seeing Harry’s mouth morph and twist into the most awkwardly polite face he has even seen catches his attention. Harry keeps that face as he nods at Tom, then turns back around and keeps walking. Tom’s actually stunned, either that boy has no control of his own facial expressions or he was mocking Tom’s own response motion for motion. Surely his own expression was not so painfully awkward to have been on the receiving end of? He tries to identify the feeling in his stomach, labels it as indignation as he walks with purpose back to the common room (he does not stamp his feet, they just echo louder in the corridor). Even as an adult he still can’t correctly identify the emotions Harry brings out in him.

The two of them never really see much of each other after that. Harry was always darting off and skipping meals to do whatever he wanted and Tom spends too much time building himself up as Hogwarts’ golden boy to try to seek him out again. The two shared some classes, of course, and they always gave each other polite nods and smiles when they stumbled upon each other. But they were little more than polite strangers at the end of the day.

So there was no logical explanation for why at the start of fifth year Harry chooses to sit down right next to Tom in the Great Hall. He sits on Tom’s right, just like the first time the two met. Tom side-eyes him, chooses to ignore the parallel, and prepares for a conversation involving Tom politely implying that his company was not welcome at this side of the table with his followers’ surrounding him. 

“Hi, Tom,” Harry’s voice was steady and calm.

“Hello, Harry.” Tom plastered a smile on his face, far more realistic than whatever that face was he made two years ago. He turns to meet Harry’s gaze and can’t stop his mouth from falling open ever so slightly. Those green eyes have only become even more stunning. Possibly due to the double-edged blade of puberty, but more likely they were shining brighter because Harry was silently crying. He had a smile of his own to match Tom’s and didn’t seem to notice that he was crying at all. Even if it wasn’t 12:30 on the first Tuesday of the term, Tom still would have been ill-equipped to deal with a crying teenager. So he reaches for the plate of rolls on the table, offers it to Harry and lets him be the odd one out in his group.

After that, Harry never really goes away. He never makes a nuisance of himself, but he sits next to Tom during meals and takes the seat behind or next to him in classes if he gets the chance. Tom will never acknowledge it in any form, but it’s almost nice to have someone who he doesn’t have to charm constantly. The two of them just sit nearby in comfortable silence or near silence and it’s a welcome change of pace. Almost unconsciously, Tom takes to carrying around tissues for the times that Harry starts crying again. He works through it, never calls attention to it, and has the good grace to do it silently, tissues are the least Tom can do to offer as thanks for not subjecting him to a scene.

Over Christmas, when the two of them are the only fifth year Slytherins left, they manage to spend even more time with each other. They review for their OWLs together, spend hours in the library practically shoulder to shoulder despite all the open space, and in an occurrence that Tom would deny brought or brings even the slightest bit of happiness, celebrate his birthday and the new year with his first game of Exploding Snap.

When the term picks back up, the two of them remain close. Harry fits into his public life like an invisible puzzle piece Tom didn’t know he was even missing. In private he still spends his time trying to track down information about his family and researching methods of immortality, but Harry is a welcome distraction at times. Between the two parts of his life he’s balancing, his OWLs, and his duties as a prefect, the rest of the year passes in a blur. The first real jolt back to the present comes when Harry bumps his shoulder.

“Hi, Tom.” His voice is hoarse from allergies but is still uniquely charming to his ears.

“Hello, Harry.” He gives Harry a small, but genuine smile. He can’t remember when he started using those for Harry.

“I just wanted to let you know, I had a family emergency so I’m leaving a little bit early. I wanted to say goodbye to you before I left though.”

“Thank you, see you next year then? Feel free to try to keep in touch over the summer, though I can’t make any promises about responding quickly.” He hasn’t given Harry his address, he doesn’t intend to. There will always be parts of his life that he will hide from the rest of the world, even Harry isn’t exempt from that. Besides, he doesn’t intend on spending much time at the orphanage at all this summer, not with the new knowledge of where his family resides.

Harry’s smile grows a little smaller for some reason. There’s a lot he doesn’t understand about Harry or the way his emotions work.

“Right, well, there was one other thing that I wanted to say before I left.”

Before Tom can even begin to speculate on what Harry wanted to say, there’s a soft pressure to his cheek. Oh. Harry’s kissing his cheek, he thinks faintly. The kiss is stopped as quickly as it starts and Harry’s turning around with a quick, “Love you, Tom! See you next year”

Tom stands in the abandoned corridor for what feels like an eternity with his whole being still focused on that kiss. Eventually, he regains feeling in his legs and walks towards the dorm but his mind is on autopilot for the rest of the term. Even when he’s left school, left London, and made his way to Little Hangleton the only cognizant thought he has is “Oh.”

But meeting his uncle, then meeting his father and grandparents, certainly helped in redirecting his focus.

As he walked away from the home that houses his muggle family’s corpses he sighs in relief and satisfaction. With one problem swept neatly out of the way, he can now focus on the road ahead. The path to immortality will be found soon enough and he has a whole summer to puzzle out what reaction he’s meant to have to “I love you”. His next year at Hogwarts would surely be his best yet.

From here, there are two diverging paths. There is the universe Harry is from, where he spends his summer vacation, where Tom Riddle is only the name of a ghost of the past and then there is the universe he stumbled upon after his third year. Where Tom Riddle’s first Horcrux was a ring, not a diary and where Tom is more human than monster, at least for the moment. In one universe, Tom eagerly awaits reuniting with Harry for the duration of the train ride over, only to not see him that day, that year, or ever again. He throws himself into his ideas and splits his soul into so many pieces he barely feels anything when he sees Harry Potter and dismisses the occasional odd stirring in his chest when he is near the boy as whatever odd connection the two share.

But that is not this universe. In this universe, Tom waits nearby the room he’s shared with Harry for two years, with a relationship of four years. He’s waiting for Harry to come out, not to apologize, but to retrieve the one thing that could make this blow over. In his middle drawer, underneath all his shirts and away from prying eyes and the stray cat Harry keeps letting into the house. Sitting within a remarkably unremarkable small box is a ring with gemstones that match the killing curse green of Harry’s eyes almost perfectly. He’s almost excited to see Harry’s reaction to receiving it.

**Author's Note:**

> Harry: Okay so I'm going back in time and I have the chance to get information about Tom Riddle from the source himself on how to take him down. I'll take one for the team and be his friend. Maybe date him, possibly marry him later down the line.
> 
> Everyone from Harry's time: ??? you don't have to do that.
> 
> Harry, idly looking up how to plan a wedding in the 1950s and buying matching furniture for the house: Nah I'm gonna.
> 
>  
> 
> I hope you all enjoy, happy holidays!!!


End file.
